In the Washington Post, writer Irin Carmon described men as “bewildered. Uncomfortable. Wrestling with the spector of their own wrongdoing. Frightened, most of all, about how the ground rules for being a worthwhile person are changing so fast.”

And a number of feminist writers, including Rebecca Traister in The Cut, have chronicled how numerous “confused” men have turned to them for clarification, putting forward a myriad of scenarios and looking for a kind of feminist thumbs up or thumbs down.

“They text and call, not quite saying why, but leaving no doubt…are they condemned? What is the nature and severity of their crime? The anxiety of this — how to speak to guys who seek feminist absolution but whom I suspect to be compromised—is real,” wrote Traister.

Here’s the thing: Though Traister and others may have the patience to address the “confused” men of the world or those in their immediate orbit, I am not sure I do – or, at the very least, I think it’s risky if we do it on their terms, not ours.

Writing in the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland put his finger on what makes me uneasy about pandering to the world’s “confused” men: “When men have spoken out, this input has too often collapsed into the self-pitying complaint that all is now confusion, that today’s cheerfully innocent man has no idea how to behave as he is forced to pick his way through a dizzying hall of mirrors constructed by feminism and political correctness”.

There is clearly a cultural reckoning of sorts taking place at the end of a year that started with Trump’s “Pussygate”, saw a high-water mark with Weinstein, and subsequent wave upon wave of further allegations batter our shores.

But the trademark questions of the “confused” man are not those of a man grappling with his failure to speak up when he knew a friend or colleague was acting inappropriately (in so many of these cases, the perpetrator’s behavior was described as an “open secret”).

And the “confused” man is not thinking about how he may have personally failed to adhere to a standard he clearly knew existed but (rightly) believed he could violate without consequence.

There are several risks of pandering to this particular group of “confused” men and a debate framed in these terms.

Firstly, and perhaps most importantly, it reinforces the idea that this stuff is really terribly confusing. It gives weight to the suggestion that perpetrators can stumble into harassment and assault accidentally, in a kind of confused fog.

They were blind, the “confused” men claim, but with our help now they see. What has gone before is water under the sexual harassment and assault bridge. This is a common theme of the high-profile perpetrators’ mea culpas. Funny how having your behavior publicly exposed helps clarify confusion almost overnight.

Secondly, being taken in by requests to provide clarity for “confused” men is a form of derailing, luring women, particularly feminists with a public platform, into playing harassment umpire in a variety of highly specific scenarios and discerning the difference between the “high level” and “low level” abuse. This is something that will ultimately backfire.

Having played that game, and contributed to a lengthy, and highly specific playbook governing relations between men and women in the “new” post Weinstein era, women will simply be told: see it is all terribly complicated and how on earth are we supposed to remember all that. We won’t win.

Lastly, and this is related to the last point, indulging “confused” men in this way infantilizes them. Are they really incapable of seeking out widely available and long standing guidance on sexual harassment, consent and abuse of power and applying it? We don’t really need to put pen to paper and work this stuff out now.

At the end of the day, I am weary of contributing to anything that normalizes the idea that treating women with dignity and respect, abiding by the principles of consent and avoiding abuse of power is a complicated, confusing endeavour men are incapable of mastering without women playing tutor and schoolmarm.

I am also mindful that it is going to take a lot more than the clarification of men’s “confusion” to sort this. It is going to take a genuine commitment to dismantling the structures and culture that give men such power over women in the first place and makes so many of us complicit in protecting them when they use wield it.

Rather than chasing the red herring of clearing up men’s “confusion”, I’d rather go to the holiday party. If the “confused” men of the world decide not to come along, well then, that’s just more food and drink for me.

Kristine Ziwica is a freelance writer based in Melbourne. She started her career at Ms. Magazine in New York. She was a 2002 Burns Journalism Fellowship recipient, spending three months in Munich working for a daily paper. More recently, she has managed strategic communications campaigns for the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission and the media engagement program for Our Watch, the national foundation to prevent violence against women.